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* [9fans] licence question
@ 2022-01-27 22:43 ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-27 22:48 ` hiro
  2022-01-28  3:14 ` Lucio De Re
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-27 22:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 545 bytes --]

I noticed that I can't distribute fonts and ghostscript as part of a plan9 (9legacy, 9front) system due to their licensing terms. 

Does anybody know about code, libraries, binaries, documentation present on the latest 9legacy or 9front iso's which are outside the newly applied MIT-licence ?

Thanks in advance

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-27 22:43 [9fans] licence question ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-01-27 22:48 ` hiro
  2022-01-27 23:33   ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-28  3:14 ` Lucio De Re
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: hiro @ 2022-01-27 22:48 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

no, as far as i know, just those B&H fonts in particular are non-free.
i think the ghostscript code can be distributed without any issues.
9front policy is that all new code is MIT.

On 1/27/22, ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:
> I noticed that I can't distribute fonts and ghostscript as part of a plan9
> (9legacy, 9front) system due to their licensing terms.
> 
> Does anybody know about code, libraries, binaries, documentation present on
> the latest 9legacy or 9front iso's which are outside the newly applied
> MIT-licence ?
> 
> Thanks in advance

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-27 22:48 ` hiro
@ 2022-01-27 23:33   ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-28  0:05     ` hiro
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-27 23:33 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 990 bytes --]

Thanks hiro.

Regarding ghostscript : 

In plan9-2e this was written in README.Plan9

> Aladdin Ghostscript has been licensed to be included with the
> release of Plan 9.  Minor changes were made to the sources to
> accommodate a couple of restrictions in the APE library and to
> produce Plan 9 output formats.  These changes are all conditioned
> by
> #ifdef        Plan9
> and were made in December, 1994.  As well, the build was rearranged
> to be driven by a Plan 9 mkfile.
> 

After Realease 4 the ghostscript version was updated and in the folder cmd/gs/doc/public.html is part of the distribution and that isn't conforming to the MIT licence. 3 2 Restrictions makes commerical use without a written licence from Aladdin imposible. 


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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-27 23:33   ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-01-28  0:05     ` hiro
  2022-01-28  0:42       ` ibrahim via 9fans
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: hiro @ 2022-01-28  0:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

yes, but it's ok to distribute

On 1/28/22, ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:
> Thanks hiro.
>
> Regarding ghostscript :
>
> In plan9-2e this was written in README.Plan9
>
>> Aladdin Ghostscript has been licensed to be included with the
>> release of Plan 9.  Minor changes were made to the sources to
>> accommodate a couple of restrictions in the APE library and to
>> produce Plan 9 output formats.  These changes are all conditioned
>> by
>> #ifdef        Plan9
>> and were made in December, 1994.  As well, the build was rearranged
>> to be driven by a Plan 9 mkfile.
>>
> 
> After Realease 4 the ghostscript version was updated and in the folder
> cmd/gs/doc/public.html is part of the distribution and that isn't conforming
> to the MIT licence. 3 2 Restrictions makes commerical use without a written
> licence from Aladdin imposible.
> 

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-28  0:05     ` hiro
@ 2022-01-28  0:42       ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-28  0:46         ` ori
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-28  0:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 865 bytes --]

I'm lucky cause I don't need ghostscript, page (depending on it) the fonts. I'm using a framebuffer renderer instead of rio for my tiny kiosk version of 9front. 

My code depends on the bootloader, the drivers, kernelcode, libraries from 9front. Especially the WiFi-drivers, usb support ramfs and loop-devices as implemented by 9front and those are all MIT licenced as far as I understood.

Do you have a recommended copyright notice which I can display or would you prefer links to p9f, legacy9 and 9front while displaying the MIT licence. My distribution will be closed source but I intend to share some parts with the community.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-28  0:42       ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-01-28  0:46         ` ori
  2022-01-28  1:14           ` ibrahim via 9fans
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ori @ 2022-01-28  0:46 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

Quoth ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net>:
> I'm lucky cause I don't need ghostscript, page (depending on it) the fonts. I'm using a framebuffer renderer instead of rio for my tiny kiosk version of 9front. 
> 
> My code depends on the bootloader, the drivers, kernelcode, libraries from 9front. Especially the WiFi-drivers, usb support ramfs and loop-devices as implemented by 9front and those are all MIT licenced as far as I understood.
> 
> Do you have a recommended copyright notice which I can display or would you prefer links to p9f, legacy9 and 9front while displaying the MIT licence. My distribution will be closed source but I intend to share some parts with the community.
> 

Take a look in /lib/legal.


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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-28  0:46         ` ori
@ 2022-01-28  1:14           ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-28  3:23             ` Kurt H Maier via 9fans
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-28  1:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 590 bytes --]

Thanks for your hint ori,

After searching for Copying, Copyright, Licence I found these problematic commands (libs) :

Xen (9f)
diff (9f,l9)
patch (9f, l9)
ghostscript (9f, l9)
mp3dec (9f, l9)
lzip (l9)

9f ... 9font
l9 ... legacy9

I'm not sure how problematic icclib could be. Clause 4 could be dangerous regarding ... derived from based on ... 
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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-27 22:43 [9fans] licence question ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-27 22:48 ` hiro
@ 2022-01-28  3:14 ` Lucio De Re
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: Lucio De Re @ 2022-01-28  3:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

On 1/28/22, ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:
> I noticed that I can't distribute fonts and ghostscript as part of a plan9
> (9legacy, 9front) system due to their licensing terms.
>
Any font you realy, really can't live without?

> Does anybody know about code, libraries, binaries, documentation present on
> the latest 9legacy or 9front iso's which are outside the newly applied
> MIT-licence ?
>
South Africans are like Yankee pioneers, incapable of any discipline;
I have been brain-washed into the same mold and don't care much for
copyright, just to set the tone here.

What I've found is that P9P's fontsrv is quite capable of providing
access to just about any font type in common usage with minimal
incantations.

Fontsrv is a little buggy, various versions in different manners, but
all failure modes I have encountered so far are non-destructive.
Anyone interested in giving me a hand consolidating the code into a
single, architecture-agnostic tool, please do contact me. What works
more or less out of the box is pretty good, it deserves more love and
affection.

Lucio.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-28  1:14           ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-01-28  3:23             ` Kurt H Maier via 9fans
  2022-01-28 12:01               ` ibrahim via 9fans
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: Kurt H Maier via 9fans @ 2022-01-28  3:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

On Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 08:14:25PM -0500, ibrahim via 9fans wrote:
> Thanks for your hint ori,
> 
> After searching for Copying, Copyright, Licence I found these problematic commands (libs) :
> 
> Xen (9f)
> diff (9f,l9)
> patch (9f, l9)
> ghostscript (9f, l9)
> mp3dec (9f, l9)
> lzip (l9)
> 
> 9f ... 9font
> l9 ... legacy9
> 
> I'm not sure how problematic icclib could be. Clause 4 could be dangerous regarding ... derived from based on ... 

None of these prohibit redistribution.  Feel free to delete them from
your copy.

khm

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-28  3:23             ` Kurt H Maier via 9fans
@ 2022-01-28 12:01               ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-28 21:59                 ` hiro
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-28 12:01 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1454 bytes --]

On Friday, 28 January 2022, at 4:23 AM, Kurt H Maier wrote:
> None of these prohibit redistribution.  Feel free to delete them from
your copy.

I'm intending to distribute a closed source binary release as a kiosk application which will be used as a graphical terminal for students. So anything containing GPL code can't be part of the base installment. Users can decide to download and install binaries on their computer but the moment I distribute a GPL application as an integral part of my system where some of the binaries depend on their existence without alternatives my code and binaries get infected by GPL. 

I already deleted ghostscript and all fonts from 9front to avoid legal problems. Xen, mp3dec, lzip weren't used by my app the only surprises were diff and patch which I can substitute by not GPL'ed versions.

You are right if I would distribute my kiosk software in binary and source form like all plan9 distributions do. Then I would have fulfilled the necessities of GPL regarding redistribution. But the problem of "work based upon", "word depends on" would perhaps remain for some of the tools used by plan9. In common you are right but not when someone makes a binary distribution ...

Thanks
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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-28 12:01               ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-01-28 21:59                 ` hiro
  2022-01-29 13:03                   ` ibrahim via 9fans
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: hiro @ 2022-01-28 21:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

why should it be closed source?
you're gonna seriously put the effort to remove all the traces of source files?
why not just keep the source so people can learn about the software
that they are using?!
students are supposed to learn, no?


On 1/28/22, ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:
> On Friday, 28 January 2022, at 4:23 AM, Kurt H Maier wrote:
>> None of these prohibit redistribution.  Feel free to delete them from
> your copy.
> 
> I'm intending to distribute a closed source binary release as a kiosk
> application which will be used as a graphical terminal for students. So
> anything containing GPL code can't be part of the base installment. Users
> can decide to download and install binaries on their computer but the moment
> I distribute a GPL application as an integral part of my system where some
> of the binaries depend on their existence without alternatives my code and
> binaries get infected by GPL.
> 
> I already deleted ghostscript and all fonts from 9front to avoid legal
> problems. Xen, mp3dec, lzip weren't used by my app the only surprises were
> diff and patch which I can substitute by not GPL'ed versions.
> 
> You are right if I would distribute my kiosk software in binary and source
> form like all plan9 distributions do. Then I would have fulfilled the
> necessities of GPL regarding redistribution. But the problem of "work based
> upon", "word depends on" would perhaps remain for some of the tools used by
> plan9. In common you are right but not when someone makes a binary
> distribution ...
> 
> Thanks

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-28 21:59                 ` hiro
@ 2022-01-29 13:03                   ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-29 13:24                     ` hiro
                                       ` (4 more replies)
  0 siblings, 5 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-29 13:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 6254 bytes --]

On Friday, 28 January 2022, at 10:59 PM, hiro wrote:
> why should it be closed source?
you're gonna seriously put the effort to remove all the traces of source files?

This kiosk app is meant for students in math, electrotechnics, mechanics ... its a closed area network where only registered students can connect. This plattform is only meant for exchange of data and informations. The app is distributed as an iso to be run from bare hardware or qemu (virtual box). The current version is running based on FreeBSD and has a size caused by X11 necessity and accompanying programs of 800 MB. I'm trying to reduce the size and increasing the performance by using plan9. My plattform generates form many simulation tasks, symbolic calculations, plotting, ... intermediate C code and translates this to programs which are called as child processes and generate their output for rendering. LLVM is needed two times in the FreeBSD installation once for X11 and once as a system compiler. By using plan9 I can reduce the size of this kiosk application to estimated 300 MB. I gave plan9 a try a few years ago and was fascinated but the licence wasn't attractive at that time. But now it's ideal for such tasks.

Some sources are part of this installment inside a loop file those are provided internally with a ramfs so in time compilation gets possible. The moment I include GPL licensed code into this ramfs this would infect my own licence. My plattform is BSD 2 claused the students can distribute it freely but the mechanics for connecting to the closed area network are hidden. The MIT licence, zlib, Ogg Vorbis license are compatible with BSD 2 license and require proper acknowlegdement but GPL can't be used in such a manner. 

Plan9 with its new license is optimal for such applications. I think that plan9 would have been more wide spread if this new license would have been applied from the beginning. And I believe that the reason why NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD are not as wide spread as Linux was the lack of a compiler suite conforming to the BSD license. Some time ago the BSD project asked for a license change for plan9 to integrate the C compiler which didn't happen at that time. But I'm sure that in the near future their will be some BSD forks which will take more ideas and tools from Plan9 (especially the compiler suite). Plan9 has more advantages besides those - nearly direct access to the hardware and a simplified way to enhancements due to its namespaces and 9fs. 

I'm using BSD systems since 1991 and I think its important to follow a strict licensing scheme otherwise many years later as it happened in NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD you start to search for alternative implementations cause at some point your code is not accompanied by incompatible licensed code but is depending on those so it is infected. If you decide to distribute a system with a non infecting open source license than its important to do this in a consistent form. The more time passes the more you depend on parts and the less gets the chance to exchange those parts. 

I am consequently avoiding infecting licenses in my projects and my distributions for decades now and those parts of plan9 (9front) which are not conforming are not a big deal to throw away. diff, patch are available in conforming licensed versions. I prefer ogg vorbis to mp3 due to its patent problems in the past. There are dozens of truetype fonts with better quality and distributable. The only problematic part not only to plan9 but also all BSD systems is ghostscript but I have an existing translater from postscript to svg and a closed source svg library for rendering for other projects where I would perhaps need page and the dependency to ghostscript. No need for lzip and xen ...

The reason why this reply was this long is simple :

My experience from the past and my involvements in BSD projects tought me that many open source projects try to take large steps in short time and most often they borrow code or libraries from projects not conforming with their chosen license. Legal questions are taken very lightly for a few years but than at some point in time those legal questions surface. The reason why linux took over was this simple - BSD 4.3 lost its compilers.

There are people (I am one of them) who also have to write commercial projects for a living. I'm developing embedded software for electronic circuits and plan9 is now a real alternative for me cause of its new license. I can decide for each project if I want to make it open source or not. And by consequently avoiding infecting licenses I can use the same code base for open source as well as closed source projects.

Why do you think p9f asked for a relicensing of plan9 while it was already gpl licensed a few years ago ? Both are redistributable but the MIT version is also usable for closed source commercial projects while the GPL version is not. Does this matter ? Yes of course it matters for people or companies. Its sometimes amusing to see developers taking legal issues lightly. 

I'm not an advocate but be assured : The moment you distribute lets say a set top box based on plan9 using legacy9 or 9front and you don't delete those mentioned parts from your distribution you can't make it closed source. If your set top box plays mp3 or opens a pdf ps file by using ghostscript and this is a significant part of the functionality you have created a derived work based on or depending on GPL'ed code. To solve this problem you would have to seperate those parts from your hardware and make it downloadable to keep it closed source. But this wouldn't be a real solution because page depends on the existence of ghostscript to display pdf and ps files so you have a 1:1 dependency. FSF perhaps won't take this seriously. Aladdin will because they offer a commercial license alternative. And your concurrents will also look closely to make your product open sourced. This is not fiction this is reality happening hundreds of times per year. 

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 13:03                   ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-01-29 13:24                     ` hiro
  2022-01-29 14:08                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-29 14:26                     ` David Leimbach via 9fans
                                       ` (3 subsequent siblings)
  4 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: hiro @ 2022-01-29 13:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

i never cared about the gpl license. it didn't improve anything as
it's less permissive than we had before.

i still see a risk when math&electrical engineers will be barred
access to the sourcecode.
maybe they would find a beautiful solution by changing a few lines of
code, allowing you to improve your (one-man-project ?) system.

generally i think if all users can change the code and recompile
everything, this makes it infinitely more maintainable.

one of the best things about plan9 is that all source and binaries are
all part of the distribution and installation, and easily
re-(cross-)compilable by anybody.

i don't buy the argument that source code would be too big. for just
one subject in school i had to download many gigabytes of quartus,
over a decade ago. our source is nowhere near that big.

On 1/29/22, ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:
> On Friday, 28 January 2022, at 10:59 PM, hiro wrote:
>> why should it be closed source?
> you're gonna seriously put the effort to remove all the traces of source
> files?
> 
> This kiosk app is meant for students in math, electrotechnics, mechanics ...
> its a closed area network where only registered students can connect. This
> plattform is only meant for exchange of data and informations. The app is
> distributed as an iso to be run from bare hardware or qemu (virtual box).
> The current version is running based on FreeBSD and has a size caused by X11
> necessity and accompanying programs of 800 MB. I'm trying to reduce the size
> and increasing the performance by using plan9. My plattform generates form
> many simulation tasks, symbolic calculations, plotting, ... intermediate C
> code and translates this to programs which are called as child processes and
> generate their output for rendering. LLVM is needed two times in the FreeBSD
> installation once for X11 and once as a system compiler. By using plan9 I
> can reduce the size of this kiosk application to estimated 300 MB. I gave
> plan9 a try a few years ago and was fascinated but the licence wasn't
> attractive at that time. But now it's ideal for such tasks.
> 
> Some sources are part of this installment inside a loop file those are
> provided internally with a ramfs so in time compilation gets possible. The
> moment I include GPL licensed code into this ramfs this would infect my own
> licence. My plattform is BSD 2 claused the students can distribute it freely
> but the mechanics for connecting to the closed area network are hidden. The
> MIT licence, zlib, Ogg Vorbis license are compatible with BSD 2 license and
> require proper acknowlegdement but GPL can't be used in such a manner.
> 
> Plan9 with its new license is optimal for such applications. I think that
> plan9 would have been more wide spread if this new license would have been
> applied from the beginning. And I believe that the reason why NetBSD,
> OpenBSD, FreeBSD are not as wide spread as Linux was the lack of a compiler
> suite conforming to the BSD license. Some time ago the BSD project asked for
> a license change for plan9 to integrate the C compiler which didn't happen
> at that time. But I'm sure that in the near future their will be some BSD
> forks which will take more ideas and tools from Plan9 (especially the
> compiler suite). Plan9 has more advantages besides those - nearly direct
> access to the hardware and a simplified way to enhancements due to its
> namespaces and 9fs.
> 
> I'm using BSD systems since 1991 and I think its important to follow a
> strict licensing scheme otherwise many years later as it happened in NetBSD,
> FreeBSD and OpenBSD you start to search for alternative implementations
> cause at some point your code is not accompanied by incompatible licensed
> code but is depending on those so it is infected. If you decide to
> distribute a system with a non infecting open source license than its
> important to do this in a consistent form. The more time passes the more you
> depend on parts and the less gets the chance to exchange those parts.
> 
> I am consequently avoiding infecting licenses in my projects and my
> distributions for decades now and those parts of plan9 (9front) which are
> not conforming are not a big deal to throw away. diff, patch are available
> in conforming licensed versions. I prefer ogg vorbis to mp3 due to its
> patent problems in the past. There are dozens of truetype fonts with better
> quality and distributable. The only problematic part not only to plan9 but
> also all BSD systems is ghostscript but I have an existing translater from
> postscript to svg and a closed source svg library for rendering for other
> projects where I would perhaps need page and the dependency to ghostscript.
> No need for lzip and xen ...
> 
> The reason why this reply was this long is simple :
> 
> My experience from the past and my involvements in BSD projects tought me
> that many open source projects try to take large steps in short time and
> most often they borrow code or libraries from projects not conforming with
> their chosen license. Legal questions are taken very lightly for a few years
> but than at some point in time those legal questions surface. The reason why
> linux took over was this simple - BSD 4.3 lost its compilers.
> 
> There are people (I am one of them) who also have to write commercial
> projects for a living. I'm developing embedded software for electronic
> circuits and plan9 is now a real alternative for me cause of its new
> license. I can decide for each project if I want to make it open source or
> not. And by consequently avoiding infecting licenses I can use the same code
> base for open source as well as closed source projects.
> 
> Why do you think p9f asked for a relicensing of plan9 while it was already
> gpl licensed a few years ago ? Both are redistributable but the MIT version
> is also usable for closed source commercial projects while the GPL version
> is not. Does this matter ? Yes of course it matters for people or companies.
> Its sometimes amusing to see developers taking legal issues lightly.
> 
> I'm not an advocate but be assured : The moment you distribute lets say a
> set top box based on plan9 using legacy9 or 9front and you don't delete
> those mentioned parts from your distribution you can't make it closed
> source. If your set top box plays mp3 or opens a pdf ps file by using
> ghostscript and this is a significant part of the functionality you have
> created a derived work based on or depending on GPL'ed code. To solve this
> problem you would have to seperate those parts from your hardware and make
> it downloadable to keep it closed source. But this wouldn't be a real
> solution because page depends on the existence of ghostscript to display pdf
> and ps files so you have a 1:1 dependency. FSF perhaps won't take this
> seriously. Aladdin will because they offer a commercial license alternative.
> And your concurrents will also look closely to make your product open
> sourced. This is not fiction this is reality happening hundreds of times per
> year.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 13:24                     ` hiro
@ 2022-01-29 14:08                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-29 14:59                         ` sirjofri
                                           ` (4 more replies)
  0 siblings, 5 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-29 14:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2344 bytes --]

On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 2:24 PM, hiro wrote:
> i don't buy the argument that source code would be too big. for just
one subject in school i had to download many gigabytes of quartus,
over a decade ago. our source is nowhere near that big.

A kiosk application for educational purposes in subjects not involving programming consists of tools for viewing texts, animations,  images, a calculator a plotter and an interface do upload pictures taken from your handwritten assignments. There is also a chat platform for group chats and individual talking. The whole plattform uses TCP/IP as its only communication protocol avoiding existing RFC standards. The GUI is similar to a web site but looks more like a desktop with windows where all tools like calculator, chat clients, upload tools are represented by floating windows. Nothing more and nothing less. The purpose of this application is not teaching the students how to realize such a platform but the subjects they need to pass their exams at university. There is no benefit for the students to learn how to realize such a platform and thats also not the goal of this project.

My Freebsd version has now 800 MB. A great amount of this size is caused by hand written sample solution scans for past exams provided as 300dpi images (png or ppm). Most of my notes are handwritten cause this way to provide solutions for exam questions is faster and simpler. Some of the teachings are provided as ogg vorbis files.

The system part regarding Freebsd and X11 can be reduced by using plan9 dramatically. My own software has a few MB. In the plan9 distribution I will use a new image format based on horizontal scanlines using 256 colors. This has an acceptable quality is faster to render and the size of the image files will shrink to about 25%. 

800 MB aren't only the sources they include the base course material. The application has to make this material visible, usable and allow students to connect to deliver their assignments ask questions get back hand written notes and to exchange information with others using this closed network. 

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread

* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 13:03                   ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-29 13:24                     ` hiro
@ 2022-01-29 14:26                     ` David Leimbach via 9fans
  2022-02-01 14:12                       ` Dan Cross
  2022-01-29 16:15                     ` Wes Kussmaul
                                       ` (2 subsequent siblings)
  4 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: David Leimbach via 9fans @ 2022-01-29 14:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans



> On Jan 29, 2022, at 8:03 AM, ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:
> 
> And I believe that the reason why NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD are not as wide spread as Linux was the lack of a compiler suite conforming to the BSD license

For some people it’s because they didn’t have a math coprocessor and Linux didn’t need one. For others it was the AT&T lawsuit.

I haven’t ever heard the compiler tool chain was a big reason, but I’d be interested to hear your perspective here. GCC can produce code of any license.
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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 14:08                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-01-29 14:59                         ` sirjofri
  2022-01-29 18:11                         ` Grant Defayette
                                           ` (3 subsequent siblings)
  4 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: sirjofri @ 2022-01-29 14:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans


29.01.2022 15:08:11 ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net>:
> The system part regarding Freebsd and X11 can be reduced by using plan9 
> dramatically. My own software has a few MB. In the plan9 distribution I 
> will use a new image format based on horizontal scanlines using 256 
> colors. This has an acceptable quality is faster to render and the size 
> of the image files will shrink to about 25%.

I'm interested in that image format. Btw in my experience it's often very 
small to take an extremely simple image format that can compress well and 
store it in a compressed format, decompress on demand.

This is btw what farbfeld is meant for: very simple format with good 
enough color depth, easily compressible to sizes smaller than png. It's 
literally just uint16 rgba per pixel in horizontal lines. I haven't 
really looked at plan 9 image format and how it compares, but I assume 
the result would be very similar.

(Btw I should have uploaded some converters for farbfeld for 9 somewhere)

Also, while thinking about it, I think the plan 9 images support 
different color palettes and stuff like that?

In general, I agree with a kiosk solution that doesn't need public 
sources, however I encourage you to split your content and the software. 
Content can easily be on a common fileserver and mounted into /lib or 
wherever, while you can certainly benefit from other people being able to 
read your code and contribute improvements and fixes. They don't need all 
the content for that and sample files can be enough.

Maybe try to compare your system with how /sys/doc is set up: it contains 
the important papers. Imagine on a linux system you'd have all papers 
about all systems! It would be huge and nobody would read it.

sirjofri

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread

* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 13:03                   ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-29 13:24                     ` hiro
  2022-01-29 14:26                     ` David Leimbach via 9fans
@ 2022-01-29 16:15                     ` Wes Kussmaul
  2022-01-29 16:56                     ` Bakul Shah
  2022-01-29 18:58                     ` cinap_lenrek
  4 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: Wes Kussmaul @ 2022-01-29 16:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans


On 1/29/22 08:03, ibrahim via 9fans wrote:
> On Friday, 28 January 2022, at 10:59 PM, hiro wrote:
>> why should it be closed source? you're gonna seriously put the effort 
>> to remove all the traces of source files?
> <clip>
> I am consequently avoiding infecting licenses in my projects and my 
> distributions for decades now and those parts of plan9 (9front) which 
> are not conforming are not a big deal to throw away. diff, patch are 
> available in conforming licensed versions.

Ibrahim, this is a big unacknowledged problem in open source.

A solution is proposed at gos.osmio.ch:

***

"Until now, the world of software licensing has been divided into two 
models: proprietary and open source. That has served us well… or has 
served us anyway... for decades. But the world needs something better*–* 
a third way if you will. Allow us to introduce that third model to you.

The *proprietary ecosystems* of Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, Oracle and 
others are governed. In each case, an identifiable entity, a company, 
*takes responsibility for keeping the system useful and secure. That’s 
good.*

Open source software also provides its own kind of goodness. Anyone can 
put open source software to use, avoiding market manipulation, 
proprietary barriers, license fees, file format gotchas, hidden privacy 
erosion techniques, and the rest of the not so good stuff that infests 
proprietary technology.

Proprietary software might have been OK when your phone was wired into 
the wall and your “micro” computer was an unconnected glorified 
typewriter. But now that we all live a large portion of our lives in the 
digital world, that private, closed governance has us living down on the 
plantations of the owners of those proprietary platforms.

*So how do we get the benefits of both governed systems and open source 
systems at the same time?*

The answer is:

*Governed Open Source*

**

Governed Open Source is genuinely a third new category alongside 
proprietary and open source."

***

GOS includes very old constructs from the physical world such as 
professional licensing of code auditors and many others. I suggest 
checking it out.


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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 13:03                   ` ibrahim via 9fans
                                       ` (2 preceding siblings ...)
  2022-01-29 16:15                     ` Wes Kussmaul
@ 2022-01-29 16:56                     ` Bakul Shah
  2022-01-29 17:17                       ` ori
  2022-01-29 18:14                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-29 18:58                     ` cinap_lenrek
  4 siblings, 2 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: Bakul Shah @ 2022-01-29 16:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 7654 bytes --]

If there is no programming to be done by the kiosk users, why do you need
any compilers? Similarly you can remove many other things from your
kiosk image. In fact you should have a script that prepares the image.

xorg needs llvm only for *building* mesa-dri.  If you are just using prebuilt
freebsd packages, you don't need it. Even if you are compiling some things
inside the kiosk, you can probably make do with tcc, which is much much
smaller and faster (though it won't generate as fast code as llvm or gcc).
tcc is LGPL so your code is not infected. Just by cutting out the two copies
of llvm, your image size will shrink by about 400-500MB.

Also note that plan9 c compilers are likely no faster than tcc. And there will
be other challenges.

Not to dissuade you from switching to plan9 but just pointing out
there are ways to reduce the image size while staying with FreeBSD.

> On Jan 29, 2022, at 5:03 AM, ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net <mailto:9fans@9fans.net>> wrote:
> 
> On Friday, 28 January 2022, at 10:59 PM, hiro wrote:
>> why should it be closed source? you're gonna seriously put the effort to remove all the traces of source files?
> 
> This kiosk app is meant for students in math, electrotechnics, mechanics ... its a closed area network where only registered students can connect. This plattform is only meant for exchange of data and informations. The app is distributed as an iso to be run from bare hardware or qemu (virtual box). The current version is running based on FreeBSD and has a size caused by X11 necessity and accompanying programs of 800 MB. I'm trying to reduce the size and increasing the performance by using plan9. My plattform generates form many simulation tasks, symbolic calculations, plotting, ... intermediate C code and translates this to programs which are called as child processes and generate their output for rendering. LLVM is needed two times in the FreeBSD installation once for X11 and once as a system compiler. By using plan9 I can reduce the size of this kiosk application to estimated 300 MB. I gave plan9 a try a few years ago and was fascinated but the licence wasn't attractive at that time. But now it's ideal for such tasks.
> 
> Some sources are part of this installment inside a loop file those are provided internally with a ramfs so in time compilation gets possible. The moment I include GPL licensed code into this ramfs this would infect my own licence. My plattform is BSD 2 claused the students can distribute it freely but the mechanics for connecting to the closed area network are hidden. The MIT licence, zlib, Ogg Vorbis license are compatible with BSD 2 license and require proper acknowlegdement but GPL can't be used in such a manner. 
> 
> Plan9 with its new license is optimal for such applications. I think that plan9 would have been more wide spread if this new license would have been applied from the beginning. And I believe that the reason why NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD are not as wide spread as Linux was the lack of a compiler suite conforming to the BSD license. Some time ago the BSD project asked for a license change for plan9 to integrate the C compiler which didn't happen at that time. But I'm sure that in the near future their will be some BSD forks which will take more ideas and tools from Plan9 (especially the compiler suite). Plan9 has more advantages besides those - nearly direct access to the hardware and a simplified way to enhancements due to its namespaces and 9fs. 
> 
> I'm using BSD systems since 1991 and I think its important to follow a strict licensing scheme otherwise many years later as it happened in NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD you start to search for alternative implementations cause at some point your code is not accompanied by incompatible licensed code but is depending on those so it is infected. If you decide to distribute a system with a non infecting open source license than its important to do this in a consistent form. The more time passes the more you depend on parts and the less gets the chance to exchange those parts. 
> 
> I am consequently avoiding infecting licenses in my projects and my distributions for decades now and those parts of plan9 (9front) which are not conforming are not a big deal to throw away. diff, patch are available in conforming licensed versions. I prefer ogg vorbis to mp3 due to its patent problems in the past. There are dozens of truetype fonts with better quality and distributable. The only problematic part not only to plan9 but also all BSD systems is ghostscript but I have an existing translater from postscript to svg and a closed source svg library for rendering for other projects where I would perhaps need page and the dependency to ghostscript. No need for lzip and xen ...
> 
> The reason why this reply was this long is simple :
> 
> My experience from the past and my involvements in BSD projects tought me that many open source projects try to take large steps in short time and most often they borrow code or libraries from projects not conforming with their chosen license. Legal questions are taken very lightly for a few years but than at some point in time those legal questions surface. The reason why linux took over was this simple - BSD 4.3 lost its compilers.
> 
> There are people (I am one of them) who also have to write commercial projects for a living. I'm developing embedded software for electronic circuits and plan9 is now a real alternative for me cause of its new license. I can decide for each project if I want to make it open source or not. And by consequently avoiding infecting licenses I can use the same code base for open source as well as closed source projects.
> 
> Why do you think p9f asked for a relicensing of plan9 while it was already gpl licensed a few years ago ? Both are redistributable but the MIT version is also usable for closed source commercial projects while the GPL version is not. Does this matter ? Yes of course it matters for people or companies. Its sometimes amusing to see developers taking legal issues lightly. 
> 
> I'm not an advocate but be assured : The moment you distribute lets say a set top box based on plan9 using legacy9 or 9front and you don't delete those mentioned parts from your distribution you can't make it closed source. If your set top box plays mp3 or opens a pdf ps file by using ghostscript and this is a significant part of the functionality you have created a derived work based on or depending on GPL'ed code. To solve this problem you would have to seperate those parts from your hardware and make it downloadable to keep it closed source. But this wouldn't be a real solution because page depends on the existence of ghostscript to display pdf and ps files so you have a 1:1 dependency. FSF perhaps won't take this seriously. Aladdin will because they offer a commercial license alternative. And your concurrents will also look closely to make your product open sourced. This is not fiction this is reality happening hundreds of times per year. 
> 
> 9fans <https://9fans.topicbox.com/latest> / 9fans / see discussions <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans> + participants <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/members> + delivery options <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription>Permalink <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T3e07bfdf263a83c8-M5595c4fa89c61db53873ff4c>

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 16:56                     ` Bakul Shah
@ 2022-01-29 17:17                       ` ori
  2022-01-29 18:14                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: ori @ 2022-01-29 17:17 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

Quoth Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org>:
> In fact you should have a script that prepares the image.

Yes. See:

        /sys/lib/sysconfig/proto/distproto
        /sys/lib/dist/mkfile



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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 14:08                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-29 14:59                         ` sirjofri
@ 2022-01-29 18:11                         ` Grant Defayette
  2022-01-29 19:00                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-29 20:43                         ` hiro
                                           ` (2 subsequent siblings)
  4 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: Grant Defayette @ 2022-01-29 18:11 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3529 bytes --]

Honestly I really don't see the issue with an 800mb network image. These
kiosk machines and network should be able to handle that with no issues and
it should fit on a disk easily. What constraint are you trying to solve?
You want to switch from an easy to maintain by any Unix expert with fully
available source to an obscure system that very few people use today and
might have issues with redistribution of sources and fonts etc just to
satisfy a constraint that doesn't exist. This is the kind of thing that
would only fly at a university where they allow people to make strange
decisions that solve problems that don't really exist.

On Sat, Jan 29, 2022 at 9:08 AM ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:

> On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 2:24 PM, hiro wrote:
>
> i don't buy the argument that source code would be too big. for just one
> subject in school i had to download many gigabytes of quartus, over a
> decade ago. our source is nowhere near that big.
>
>
> A kiosk application for educational purposes in subjects not involving
> programming consists of tools for viewing texts, animations,  images, a
> calculator a plotter and an interface do upload pictures taken from your
> handwritten assignments. There is also a chat platform for group chats and
> individual talking. The whole plattform uses TCP/IP as its only
> communication protocol avoiding existing RFC standards. The GUI is similar
> to a web site but looks more like a desktop with windows where all tools
> like calculator, chat clients, upload tools are represented by floating
> windows. Nothing more and nothing less. The purpose of this application is
> not teaching the students how to realize such a platform but the subjects
> they need to pass their exams at university. There is no benefit for the
> students to learn how to realize such a platform and thats also not the
> goal of this project.
>
> My Freebsd version has now 800 MB. A great amount of this size is caused
> by hand written sample solution scans for past exams provided as 300dpi
> images (png or ppm). Most of my notes are handwritten cause this way to
> provide solutions for exam questions is faster and simpler. Some of the
> teachings are provided as ogg vorbis files.
>
> The system part regarding Freebsd and X11 can be reduced by using plan9
> dramatically. My own software has a few MB. In the plan9 distribution I
> will use a new image format based on horizontal scanlines using 256 colors.
> This has an acceptable quality is faster to render and the size of the
> image files will shrink to about 25%.
>
> 800 MB aren't only the sources they include the base course material. The
> application has to make this material visible, usable and allow students to
> connect to deliver their assignments ask questions get back hand written
> notes and to exchange information with others using this closed network.
>
> *9fans <https://9fans.topicbox.com/latest>* / 9fans / see discussions
> <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans> + participants
> <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/members> + delivery options
> <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription> Permalink
> <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T3e07bfdf263a83c8-M16ce34d043025f8cd079636e>
>

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 16:56                     ` Bakul Shah
  2022-01-29 17:17                       ` ori
@ 2022-01-29 18:14                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-29 18:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2296 bytes --]

On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 5:56 PM, Bakul Shah wrote:
> Also note that plan9 c compilers are likely no faster than tcc. And there will
> be other challenges.

My kiosk application using plan 9 and its compilers is already working. There were no problems changing from llvm to plan9 compilers. The speek difference between plan9 compiled code and gcc, llvm compiled code is irrelevant. I use compilers for many different tasks to avoid scripting at all. Everything gets expressed as C files which get automatically generated, translated and are called as child processes while using pipes. Some of those C files are for the generation of plot and graph data (2D, 3D). This data than gets rendered into image files which than are displayed. The system works similar to gnuplot, asymptote aso with the difference that no external interpreter is used. This works simpler and faster using plan9 as using freebsd and llvm. The plan9 compilers are ideal for jit tasks.

On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 5:56 PM, Bakul Shah wrote:
> Not to dissuade you from switching to plan9 but just pointing out
> there are ways to reduce the image size while staying with FreeBSD.

 Don't worry I already realized my kiosk app using plan9 and wanted to make sure of their are licensing problems I didn't know about. I only use the libraries so the problems regarding commands aren't important for me. The second reason why I asked here is cause if there are prefered ways of acknowledgement I would include those. After this thread I will place something like "This software is based in parts on plan9, legacy9 and 9front. Those are licensed under MiT <link>. For those who are interested in those projects <links>"

As a sign of my gratitude and after the results of my other thread and the lack of interest for a framebuffer device I intend to write a pdf and contribute reduced versions of  devdraw, memlayer, memdraw which can be used for creation of such framebuffer based distributions which don't need the plan9 gui. This will be licenced under the MIT. 


 
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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 13:03                   ` ibrahim via 9fans
                                       ` (3 preceding siblings ...)
  2022-01-29 16:56                     ` Bakul Shah
@ 2022-01-29 18:58                     ` cinap_lenrek
  2022-01-29 19:23                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
  4 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: cinap_lenrek @ 2022-01-29 18:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

i dont really get your problem.

my understanding is that the idea of the gpl is that if you
derive work from a gpl licensed project is that that change
will also be under gpl and you make the sourcecode available.

no?

whenever we bugfix something in ghostscript, that change will
also be under gpl. and you make the source available for
that change.

on the other hand, calling the ghostscript interpreter as a
external program, i dont think that would force your program
kiosk to be gpl licensed (for example page(1) would be in
the same situation... it calls all kinds of external image
converters, including ghostscript).

so why not just have the source of everything available?

for me, your project isnt any different from a specialized
plan9 distribution, consisting of a mix of differently licensed
projects, including your kisok program. as long as you provide
the source to the gpl components (or just everything, much easier)
you should be fine, no?

--
cinap

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 18:11                         ` Grant Defayette
@ 2022-01-29 19:00                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-29 19:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

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On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 7:12 PM, Grant Defayette wrote:
> Honestly I really don't see the issue with an 800mb network image. These kiosk machines and network should be able to handle that with no issues and it should fit on a disk easily. What constraint are you trying to solve? You want to switch from an easy to maintain by any Unix expert with fully available source to an obscure system that very few people use today and might have issues with redistribution of sources and fonts etc just to satisfy a constraint that doesn't exist. This is the kind of thing that would only fly at a university where they allow people to make strange decisions that solve problems that don't really exist.

I wrote earlier that the first project I'm using plan9 now is this kiosk application and this was already realized with FreeBSD. The purpose of such a step was also to test how difficult would it be to realize a project with plan9. I am also developing embedded software for bare metal and this test made clear plan9 is the best choice for this kind of projects. Its small the underlying abstractions fulfilled their purpose and you get a full fledged OS useful for many tasks if you are brave enough to change some parts which won't fit your demands. 

We are writing on 9fans so everyone present here made the choice to at least test a system which you call "obscure system that very few people use today". plan9 was a research project to start with and its not obscure at all. plan9, 9front are available running on different hardware even in raspberry pi (4 B) out of the box. I don't think that its a strange decision to use an existing working platform to realize projects. The code quality is good as could be expected from people who created unix. As a side note when the first ten people used unix and others also decided to switch than all of them made this so called "strange decision" and today unix used everywhere. 

I didn't have any remarkable problems substituting the fonts, and I won't have any problems substituting the remaining parts which are not MIT licensed if needed. 

You can only decide to use a project like this as a basement if you realize a few projects using it. As the Bell people remarked on the plan9 papers plan9 was used as an embedded system in commercial projects. You think Bell would have distributed this system and products based on it without verifying its reliability and quality ? The people involved in the development of plan9 are creators of unix the most important compilers the best known tools and they used this in their daily work. If you look in one of the current threads regarding a three buttoned mouse you will see that the first who answered was Rob Pike who perhaps still uses acme and some form of plan9. I don't have any doubts about the software quality of plan9 so be assured that I will use this project without doubts and this decision is definitely not obscure.

Believe it or not if plan9 had an MIT license from the beginning you can be sure that the market share of plan9 would have be at least on the level of BSD systems. Its simpler its smaller and the concepts are good. There would have been forks cause of different tastes for the GUI but that is something normal. 

A kiosk app as a test case for the decision if the chosen OS can be handled or causes unpredictable problems is the way I have chosen for myself. After a while I will learn about problems arising from this decision without harming anybody. Not the users and not me as the maintainer.  This will improve my experience. 

Regarding the size of the image. This is a service I'm providing from a dedicated Server on a commercial host. The most students today are using apple mac books they can't and won't install any operating system on those machines and I'm not willing to support x machine architectures for a students course. On my dedicated server there was placed a torrent file so I could handle the bandwidth problem in a acceptable way. At the beginning of each semester there are hundreds of downloads for this ISO. Estimated 60% of the students have to use virtual machines to start this ISO. Reducing the size of the ISO and the necessary RAM drive size where the ISO gets loaded to increases the performance. If a student has a 4 GB laptop he can afford approximately 1 to 2 GB of system memory for use with the virtual machine. Besides the ISO you have to allocate process memory so the size impacts performance regarding my experience.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 18:58                     ` cinap_lenrek
@ 2022-01-29 19:23                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-29 20:48                         ` hiro
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-29 19:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

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On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 7:58 PM, cinap_lenrek wrote:
> on the other hand, calling the ghostscript interpreter as a
external program, i dont think that would force your program
kiosk to be gpl licensed (for example page(1) would be in
the same situation... it calls all kinds of external image
converters, including ghostscript).

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugins

this plugin concept is the reason. The moment you include a gpl program and use it for two sided communications and you depend on this to fulfill your task than you get into trouble. Otherwise any gpl licensed program could be used this way. You write a few dozen lines forc, exec and pipe. Plugins form a single application. The border line is where you depend on a single gpl licensed program. 

There exists one program and that is gpl ed without using this program yours won't work than your program is called a single combined work. Otherwise their are dozens of programs and you don't depend on a gpl'ed software but you offer an interface for communicating with it also that doesn't form a single combined work. You don't depend on that.

Regarding ghostscript. As clearly stated in release 3 of plan9 Bell labs had a distribution license from aladdin. But we don't know if this license was carried over to p9f.  But at some point in time the licenced version of ghostscript was switched to a general aladdin licensed version accompanied by the regular license. Aladdin is similar to gpl regarding this plugin tematics. 

I personally would say using page for displaying pdf or ps is dangerous and makes a distribution depending on this feature highly dangerous for developers. 

My question was not only connected with my kiosk application but a general license question. For this project I prefer a closed source distribution as I would for embedded systems. In other projects I wouldn't mind making parts of the code available other parts not.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 14:08                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-29 14:59                         ` sirjofri
  2022-01-29 18:11                         ` Grant Defayette
@ 2022-01-29 20:43                         ` hiro
  2022-01-29 21:32                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-29 22:14                         ` Bakul Shah
  2022-02-04 15:30                         ` Kent R. Spillner
  4 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: hiro @ 2022-01-29 20:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

> There is no benefit for the
> students to learn how to realize such a platform and thats also not the goal
> of this project.

maybe your stuff doesn't work and this way they can at least help you
(or helpthemselves) fix it faster.

what makes you think everything will work and your students are happy
with the system?

if the odd one out of the students learns plan9 you think that's not
worth their while? then why do you use plan9 yourself? i would have
loved to have a teacher in uni that uses plan9.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 19:23                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-01-29 20:48                         ` hiro
  2022-01-29 21:18                           ` Steve Simon
  2022-01-30  7:55                           ` tlaronde
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: hiro @ 2022-01-29 20:48 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

> I personally would say using page for displaying pdf or ps is dangerous and
> makes a distribution depending on this feature highly dangerous for
> developers.

yes, it's very dangerous in terms of licensing. i suggest you rewrite
ghostscript as gs/pdf reading ability is very important for most users
(even for our own docs).

> My question was not only connected with my kiosk application but a general
> license question. For this project I prefer a closed source distribution as
> I would for embedded systems. In other projects I wouldn't mind making parts
> of the code available other parts not.

looking forward to your code submissions.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 20:48                         ` hiro
@ 2022-01-29 21:18                           ` Steve Simon
  2022-01-29 21:34                             ` hiro
  2022-01-29 21:43                             ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-30  7:55                           ` tlaronde
  1 sibling, 2 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: Steve Simon @ 2022-01-29 21:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

good grief people.

Someone doesn’t like GPLs, can we not just accept this and not tell them they are wrong.

And if they wish not to release the source for their work, again that is their decision.

its one thing to point out the (possibly) unseen side effects of these decisions but lets just leave it at that.

can we not keep 9fans supportive?

-Steve


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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 20:43                         ` hiro
@ 2022-01-29 21:32                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-29 21:42                             ` hiro
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-29 21:32 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

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On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 9:44 PM, hiro wrote:
> if the odd one out of the students learns plan9 you think that's not
worth their while? then why do you use plan9 yourself? i would have
loved to have a teacher in uni that uses plan9.

I don't can't and won't hide the fact that my virtual machine image is based upon plan9, 9front. It's based upon so every student will find references links to associated projects. Therefore I asked for your prefered form of acknowledgement.

On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 9:44 PM, hiro wrote:
> what makes you think everything will work and your students are happy
with the system?

In the last decade students using the freebsd version very happy with it and I hope students from the wintersemester will also be happy. This platform is meant to support them learning their examination stuff and the feedback is not bad. There will always be roam for improvements, there will always be bugs. All I can do is do my best. 

On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 9:48 PM, hiro wrote:
> yes, it's very dangerous in terms of licensing. i suggest you rewrite
ghostscript as gs/pdf reading ability is very important for most users
(even for our own docs).

I don't need this cause I am representing drawing data as svg or in a format similar to emf (enhanced metafile). Images are represented till now in zipped ppm format. Fonts are represented in ttf. And I support the dvi format produced by tex and metafont. pdf and ps make the use of fonts necessary which have licensing issues. 

On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 9:48 PM, hiro wrote:
> looking forward to your code submissions.
I am at it. As you remember from the other thread there is no agreement about adding framebuffer support to plan9. This will show a simple application which doesn't use devdraw, memdraw, memlayer and can't coexist with them. If their are no agreements about how and where to support a framebuffer interface its not worth the effort to implement it in a compatible way. This proof of concept version will only give a taste about what would be possible. (Expect some kind of animation without text rendering - which is not difficult but needs a clear interface definition). Of course I would prefer to share those parts with the main distros/forks of plan9 the more they are used the better they get and the more possible bugs will be discovered. 

But if you expect a desktop alternative to rio with a theming window manager than an agreement is necessary to not waste time for things never meant to be part of plan9.


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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 21:18                           ` Steve Simon
@ 2022-01-29 21:34                             ` hiro
  2022-01-29 21:43                             ` ibrahim via 9fans
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: hiro @ 2022-01-29 21:34 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

do we have any say if we don't accept this?
don't pretend there are any actions taken against this person's interest.
personally i'm seeing missed opportunity in education.
i care about education and try to encourage ways of sharing knowledge.
if you don't like it, don't waste your time with such lengthy threads
and contribute some code instead. then we can check what is wrong in
your code instead of this high-level bickering.

On 1/29/22, Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net> wrote:
> good grief people.
> 
> Someone doesn’t like GPLs, can we not just accept this and not tell them
> they are wrong.
> 
> And if they wish not to release the source for their work, again that is
> their decision.
> 
> its one thing to point out the (possibly) unseen side effects of these
> decisions but lets just leave it at that.
> 
> can we not keep 9fans supportive?
> 
> -Steve
> 

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 21:32                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-01-29 21:42                             ` hiro
  2022-01-29 22:23                               ` ibrahim via 9fans
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: hiro @ 2022-01-29 21:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

> links to associated projects. Therefore I asked for your prefered form of
> acknowledgement.

None needed whatsoever. Nobody here needs to force this extra visibility.
Just think about the students and what helps them most. We might
disagree, but it's your project, so you'll have to take all the
responsibility I'm afraid. That's how the license works ;)


>
> On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 9:44 PM, hiro wrote:
>> what makes you think everything will work and your students are happy
> with the system?
>
> In the last decade students using the freebsd version very happy with it and
> I hope students from the wintersemester will also be happy. This platform is
> meant to support them learning their examination stuff and the feedback is
> not bad. There will always be roam for improvements, there will always be
> bugs. All I can do is do my best.

Yes, so you confirm it's a one-man-project.

It's a big risk IMO if it all depends on you personally so much. Cause
then it cannot benefit from other's doing their best in addition to
you.

> On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 9:48 PM, hiro wrote:
>> yes, it's very dangerous in terms of licensing. i suggest you rewrite
> ghostscript as gs/pdf reading ability is very important for most users
> (even for our own docs).
>
> I don't need this cause I am representing drawing data as svg or in a format
> similar to emf (enhanced metafile). Images are represented till now in
> zipped ppm format. Fonts are represented in ttf. And I support the dvi
> format produced by tex and metafont. pdf and ps make the use of fonts
> necessary which have licensing issues.

Ah, you're lucky in that case.

> On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 9:48 PM, hiro wrote:
>> looking forward to your code submissions.
> I am at it. As you remember from the other thread there is no agreement
> about adding framebuffer support to plan9. This will show a simple
> application which doesn't use devdraw, memdraw, memlayer and can't coexist
> with them. If their are no agreements about how and where to support a
> framebuffer interface its not worth the effort to implement it in a
> compatible way. This proof of concept version will only give a taste about
> what would be possible. (Expect some kind of animation without text
> rendering - which is not difficult but needs a clear interface definition).
> Of course I would prefer to share those parts with the main distros/forks of
> plan9 the more they are used the better they get and the more possible bugs
> will be discovered.

Proof of concepts have value, too :)
It's quite funny what kind of stuff somebody might dig up in 2 decades
and learn something unexpected from it, happens here all the time.
I'm not saying I will personally have a need for the system, but I'd
like to spread this culture and make sure people share all they can.

As long as it compiles...

> But if you expect a desktop alternative to rio with a theming window manager
> than an agreement is necessary to not waste time for things never meant to
> be part of plan9.

I expect nothing, but if you make many great systems, I'm sure
somebody will end up finding some form of inspiration from it, whether
it's to find out how to do something or how not to do something is
another issue ;)

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 21:18                           ` Steve Simon
  2022-01-29 21:34                             ` hiro
@ 2022-01-29 21:43                             ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-29 22:44                               ` hiro
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-29 21:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

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On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 10:18 PM, Steve Simon wrote:
> Someone doesn’t like GPLs, can we not just accept this and not tell them they are wrong.

And if they wish not to release the source for their work, again that is their decision.

Thanks for your support. I mean it.

I don't get the argumentations here. Everyone was happy that plan9 was relicensed as MIT last year. If no one is allowed to make closed source distributions of plan9 based systems than why were all unhappy with the prior licenses. Years ago plan9 was licensed as GPL. 9front kept licensing with MIT. If you expect everybody to make their products and systems fully open sourced than you should have sticked with the GPL license. I admired the determination of 9front taking this step for years. Now I'm really surprised about some remarks in this thread. BSD or MIT licensed software encourages the use of such software in closed source products. GPL restricts this.

I'm also willing to support those projects with code I thing will be of value for others and giving them also the right to use this code open sourced or closed source as they prefer and allowed by applying the mit licence for my parts. 
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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 14:08                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
                                           ` (2 preceding siblings ...)
  2022-01-29 20:43                         ` hiro
@ 2022-01-29 22:14                         ` Bakul Shah
  2022-01-29 22:40                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-02-04 15:30                         ` Kent R. Spillner
  4 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: Bakul Shah @ 2022-01-29 22:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

Note that djvu would compress things very nicely. A full page
300dpi magazine color page that may be 25MB uncompressed will
compress down to 40K-80K or so and be very legible, much more
so compared a similar sized jpeg compressed image.

The current OSS djvu library is GPL but as far as I know the
original AT&T patent on the djvu technology has expired. If
anyone wants to reimplement it with a more permissive
license! The benefit is that there are a lot of existing djvu
encoded documents.

[Note: if anyone does decide to reimplement djvu, they should
not just take my word for it but verify that the djvu
patent(s) have indeed expired]

> On Jan 29, 2022, at 6:08 AM, ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:
> 
> A great amount of this size is caused by hand written sample solution scans for past exams provided as 300dpi images (png or ppm). Most of my notes are handwritten cause this way to provide solutions for exam questions is faster and simpler.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 21:42                             ` hiro
@ 2022-01-29 22:23                               ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-29 23:14                                 ` sirjofri
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-29 22:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

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On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 10:42 PM, hiro wrote:
> Proof of concepts have value, too :)
It's quite funny what kind of stuff somebody might dig up in 2 decades
and learn something unexpected from it, happens here all the time.
I'm not saying I will personally have a need for the system, but I'd
like to spread this culture and make sure people share all they can.

As long as it compiles...

Lets take a tv set as an example for a kiosk application thats not far away. What benefit does the user of a tv have if I put the sourcecode of the tv set into the mounted flash device ? Sure everybody could benefit from reading the way I programed embedded circuit but aren't there better ways to share this information ? 

As you remember from the other thread where we talked I am willing and interested to share code of interest for plan9 or derivates of it but therefore I started that discussion. I will use plan9 as a kiosk OS or as a desktop OS and if there is interest in my experiences and if there are others who intend to use this OS also in this way I want to share code, documentation and give support. I'm a software developer since 1986 I wrote a book about Visual C++ and contributed primarily to BSD projects. I don't know long you are part of open sourced software but my first open source software projects date from 1986 published in the german C64 magazines. 

Prior to the MIT licensing of plan9 I didn't use it for distributed software. My preference was OpenBSD and FreeBSD depending on the project. I don't contribute to GPL projects because that doesn't fit my opinion of open source. There are at least 5 mio people on the planet who make a living directly as developers and ten times as much making a living out of developed software products. The free beer philosophy sounds nice but the IT sector is the most important economical sector today. We are not living in paradise and people have to earn money by their work. 

You never asked me to share code I offered that on my own and I started another thread to make it in the right way. I respect the pioneers who developed plan9 at Bell and I don't want to break anything in plan9. I am using plan9 now for my projects ! And I will use it more frequently in the future ! Projects I'm doing for a living will be closed source ! In my spare time I want to support this great project and share code which gives others a good basement to also use plan9 in other ways even commercial ways to make a living out of it but which will also give idealists the opportunity to write code for a better world. I did that in the past and I'm doing it today. BSD and MIT licenses support this and the reason why I decided to give plan9 a try in a real project was the changed license.

I don't disagree to what you said cause I support open source projects and I'm making use of them. But development is not only a hobby of mine but also the way I earn my living. I don't know how things are for you but when I go shopping and am asked for the payment no one will say you don't have to pay because you are sharing everything you can for free. And be assured I'm not ashamed of the fact that I am making a living out of development education or development of software. I want to share some of my work but not all.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 22:14                         ` Bakul Shah
@ 2022-01-29 22:40                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-29 22:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

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On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 11:14 PM, Bakul Shah wrote:
> Note that djvu would compress things very nicely. A full page
300dpi magazine color page that may be 25MB uncompressed will
compress down to 40K-80K or so and be very legible, much more
so compared a similar sized jpeg compressed image.

Thanks for your hint. I'm using djvu format for scanned book pages for my private use. The algorithm isn't easy to reimplement cause it uses pattern matching in an extensive way. You get the best results for scanned material where as an example letters are matched quite often. It has superb compression ratios but is slow regarding decompression or rendering.

Regarding handwritten scans the best method I experienced is edge detection filtering and color indexing to create a ppm image. Compression leads than to smaller sizes than by using jpeg. Decompression is faster and when you combine two lines to single one (subpixeling) you get smooth and clean images.

For printed sources djvu produces far smaller results. Thank you for this hint.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 21:43                             ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-01-29 22:44                               ` hiro
  2022-01-29 23:26                                 ` ibrahim via 9fans
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: hiro @ 2022-01-29 22:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

> I don't get the argumentations here. Everyone was happy that plan9 was
> relicensed as MIT last year. If no one is allowed to make closed source
> distributions of plan9 based systems than why were all unhappy with the
> prior licenses.


You're confusing the license and expressed wishes.
Personally I will always use MIT license whenever I can. Regardless I
think it's good manners to include the source, and more true to the
original intent why it's MIT licensed.
If you don't do as I please, I'll continue expressing my disagreement,
nothing more than that. You're as usual free to ignore it.
License is coercion. I don't like that.

> Years ago plan9 was licensed as GPL. 9front kept licensing
> with MIT. If you expect everybody to make their products and systems fully
> open sourced than you should have sticked with the GPL license.

GPL has never done anything for me, why should I do anything for them?

> I admired
> the determination of 9front taking this step for years. Now I'm really
> surprised about some remarks in this thread. BSD or MIT licensed software
> encourages the use of such software in closed source products. GPL restricts
> this.

Hahaha. Everything I say here is just my personal opinion, not some
fucking official 9front foundation official political theater. And you
misunderstood it completely. I guess you really like legalese, and you
thus never managed to think for even one second about the philosophy
and intent behind the license.

> I'm also willing to support those projects with code I thing will be of
> value for others and giving them also the right to use this code open
> sourced or closed source as they prefer and allowed by applying the mit
> licence for my parts.

I never doubted your intent either. Given that you're trying to use
this for education already gave you max. points for first impression.
Doesn't mean I won't technically disagree. Make with it what you will.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 22:23                               ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-01-29 23:14                                 ` sirjofri
  2022-01-29 23:27                                   ` hiro
  2022-01-29 23:36                                   ` ibrahim via 9fans
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: sirjofri @ 2022-01-29 23:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans


29.01.2022 23:23:32 ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net>:
> Lets take a tv set as an example for a kiosk application thats not far 
> away. What benefit does the user of a tv have if I put the sourcecode 
> of the tv set into the mounted flash device ? Sure everybody could 
> benefit from reading the way I programed embedded circuit but aren't 
> there better ways to share this information ?

Maybe I misunderstood something about licensing stuff but, can't you just 
distribute the working build product (binaries etc, without source) to 
the TV set (or kiosk) and keep the source in a completely separate open 
space, under some open source license? I mean, does open source (gpl, 
mit) mean, you have to distribute the source in the same device?

At least that would have issues with any linux distribution I know, where 
you usually just download prebuilt binaries and have to download the 
source separately.

sirjofri

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 22:44                               ` hiro
@ 2022-01-29 23:26                                 ` ibrahim via 9fans
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-29 23:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1399 bytes --]

On Sunday, 30 January 2022, at 12:14 AM, sirjofri wrote:
> Maybe I misunderstood something about licensing stuff but, can't you just 
distribute the working build product (binaries etc, without source) to 
the TV set (or kiosk) and keep the source in a completely separate open 
space, under some open source license? I mean, does open source (gpl, 
mit) mean, you have to distribute the source in the same device?

That wasn't about licensing rules but part of the answer to hiro. You misunderstood the purpose of this sample or perhaps I didn't make it clear (sorry for that)

As a side node if you search for GPL infringements you will find some examples of large scale companies who used embedded linux without sharing their code in such devices.

On Sunday, 30 January 2022, at 12:14 AM, sirjofri wrote:
> At least that would have issues with any linux distribution I know, where 
you usually just download prebuilt binaries and have to download the 
source separately.

What you said is right you can make binary distributions but have to provide the sources. The rules are described in detail here :

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html


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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 23:14                                 ` sirjofri
@ 2022-01-29 23:27                                   ` hiro
  2022-01-29 23:36                                   ` ibrahim via 9fans
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: hiro @ 2022-01-29 23:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

> Maybe I misunderstood something about licensing stuff but, can't you just
> distribute the working build product (binaries etc, without source) to
> the TV set (or kiosk) and keep the source in a completely separate open
> space, under some open source license? I mean, does open source (gpl,
> mit) mean, you have to distribute the source in the same device?

No, you're correct. It can be distributed separately, even "on
request" is good enough to comply with gpl it seems.
And then practically it's even possible to ignore people and still not
share a bit, as countless companies show over and over again.
And then you can just run the software yourself and not even give the
binaries to anybody, instead they get a locked down horrible web
interface, and nobody can even ASK for the software and so you never
even get a valid request and nobody will ever know what GPL code you
use.
I.E. GPL is rather useless nowadays.

Still there's a value of distributing the source with the binaries:
user friendliness. As demonstrated by Plan9. As I already said.
The value of this is huge and it would be sad to see somebody give it
up just to save a few bytes.
Binaries, Source, Compilers, Documentation, for *all* target
platforms. Where else do you get this all in one like this? It's sadly
very unique to Plan9.

Of course this is completely separate from the license. I have never
seen a license state that you shouldn't make your user's life
miserable. Not like it's any more enforceable than the GPL, but it
would certainly be more amusing, which would be the point.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 23:14                                 ` sirjofri
  2022-01-29 23:27                                   ` hiro
@ 2022-01-29 23:36                                   ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-30  0:08                                     ` hiro
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-29 23:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 650 bytes --]

What I meant was that there is no sense in sharing the code for a special purpose kiosk app.

For people who are interested search for 

gpl infringement tv boxes

You will find many examples of companies who took gpl too lightly and got sued by FSF. The more users a product has which used GPL without making the code available the higher the risk gets that they get sued. FSF isn't as weak as many think they are. 
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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 23:36                                   ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-01-30  0:08                                     ` hiro
  2022-01-30  1:45                                       ` ron minnich
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: hiro @ 2022-01-30  0:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

even if it won't be used, it can still serve as example. there's sense
in that for some people.

there aren't many real-world products/solutions based on plan9, so
people who are interested to learn from others don't have so much
choice.
every addition can be potentially useful for somebody in the community.
no harm done generally, as long as you give no false hopes...

as i said, users tend to find unexpected, unintended ways of making
use of things.

On 1/30/22, ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:
> What I meant was that there is no sense in sharing the code for a special
> purpose kiosk app.
> 
> For people who are interested search for
> 
> gpl infringement tv boxes
> 
> You will find many examples of companies who took gpl too lightly and got
> sued by FSF. The more users a product has which used GPL without making the
> code available the higher the risk gets that they get sued. FSF isn't as
> weak as many think they are.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-30  0:08                                     ` hiro
@ 2022-01-30  1:45                                       ` ron minnich
  2022-01-30  2:18                                         ` ibrahim via 9fans
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ron minnich @ 2022-01-30  1:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

"Why do you think p9f asked for a relicensing of plan9 while it was
already gpl licensed a few years ago ? Both are redistributable but
the MIT version is also usable for closed source commercial projects
while the GPL version is not. Does this matter ? Yes of course it
matters for people or companies. Its sometimes amusing to see
developers taking legal issues lightly."

A little historical note here, speaking as the person who got both
those releases done.

The late jmk and I labored over a period of many months in 2013 to get
Plan 9 out under a BSD license. In the end, the copyright holder at
that time required that we distribute it, via UC Berkeley, under the
GPL. No choice. It was that or nothing. Those negotiations involved
many people, and it almost did not happen at all.

The p9f process was not a relicensing, it was a transfer of ownership
of the code.  One condition of the transfer, was that the GPL was
explicitly named as a license we should not use. All agreed that the
MIT license was a good one.

So it's not really correct to say anyone asked for a relicensing to
this or that specific license. The choice of license was always under
the control of whoever owned Bell Labs, and the code base, at that
time.

ron

On Sat, Jan 29, 2022 at 4:10 PM hiro <23hiro@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> even if it won't be used, it can still serve as example. there's sense
> in that for some people.
>
> there aren't many real-world products/solutions based on plan9, so
> people who are interested to learn from others don't have so much
> choice.
> every addition can be potentially useful for somebody in the community.
> no harm done generally, as long as you give no false hopes...
>
> as i said, users tend to find unexpected, unintended ways of making
> use of things.
>
> On 1/30/22, ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:
> > What I meant was that there is no sense in sharing the code for a special
> > purpose kiosk app.
> >
> > For people who are interested search for
> >
> > gpl infringement tv boxes
> >
> > You will find many examples of companies who took gpl too lightly and got
> > sued by FSF. The more users a product has which used GPL without making the
> > code available the higher the risk gets that they get sued. FSF isn't as
> > weak as many think they are.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-30  1:45                                       ` ron minnich
@ 2022-01-30  2:18                                         ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-30 21:00                                           ` ron minnich
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-30  2:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1331 bytes --]

On Sunday, 30 January 2022, at 2:45 AM, ron minnich wrote:
> The late jmk and I labored over a period of many months in 2013 to get
Plan 9 out under a BSD license. In the end, the copyright holder at
that time required that we distribute it, via UC Berkeley, under the
GPL. No choice. It was that or nothing. Those negotiations involved
many people, and it almost did not happen at all.

As far as I recall OpenBSD (Theo dR) was interested in BSD licensed compilers at that time and that didn't happen. 

On Sunday, 30 January 2022, at 2:45 AM, ron minnich wrote:
> The p9f process was not a relicensing, it was a transfer of ownership
of the code.  One condition of the transfer, was that the GPL was
explicitly named as a license we should not use. All agreed that the
MIT license was a good one.

Thanks for this choice and your efforts during those negotiations.

I only read about the expectations from BSD projects which were hoping to get an alternative Compiler for GCC. But that didn't happen at that time. 

Thank you for clarifying things sorry if I made wrong assumptions.
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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 20:48                         ` hiro
  2022-01-29 21:18                           ` Steve Simon
@ 2022-01-30  7:55                           ` tlaronde
  2022-01-30 13:44                             ` ibrahim via 9fans
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: tlaronde @ 2022-01-30  7:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

Le Sat, Jan 29, 2022 at 09:48:47PM +0100, hiro a écrit :
> > I personally would say using page for displaying pdf or ps is dangerous and
> > makes a distribution depending on this feature highly dangerous for
> > developers.
> 
> yes, it's very dangerous in terms of licensing. i suggest you rewrite
> ghostscript as gs/pdf reading ability is very important for most users
> (even for our own docs).
> 

If I have made the kerTeX distribution, it is also with the (remote) aim
to have a typographical (and drawing too with a modified MetaPost)
system not under GPL and being able to generate an enhanced DVI that
could be transformed with kerTeX own means.

I.e. the goals are:

1) To have a very limited, in size, in code language (C with a limited
dependency on a restricted subset of POSIX.2 like utilities for
scripting), in license (BSD like or MIT---Prote), in dependencies (none
but a libc and the limited POSIX.2 utilities subset),
typographical/drawing system able to render both system documentation
(including manual) and user's writing (including LaTeX);

2) That the system be self-contained: providing everything, including
fonts and till the production of a rendering; 

3) The the system be like a "hosted" typographical system, meaning that
every extension ("package") be handled by this system, whatever the OS
it is installed upon---no billions of packages versions for every OS,
but only one package for kerTeX, installing the same way on any OS.

A lot as already being done, the latest piece added being a "patch"
(change file) to TeX so that the latest LaTeX can be dumped with TeX
(LaTeX now requires both the e-TeX extensions and supplementary
primitives not present in TeX). This is in the same spirit as e-TeX and
is called Prote.

The lacking piece is the end: converting DVI to something else than PS
and extending DVI to include drawing primitives so that there is a
"MetaPost" generating DVI (Metadraw). The other points are already
addressed.

FWIW,
-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                     http://www.kergis.com/
                    http://kertex.kergis.com/
                       http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-30  7:55                           ` tlaronde
@ 2022-01-30 13:44                             ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-01-30 13:56                               ` tlaronde
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-01-30 13:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 955 bytes --]

On Sunday, 30 January 2022, at 8:55 AM, tlaronde wrote:
> The lacking piece is the end: converting DVI to something else than PS
and extending DVI to include drawing primitives so that there is a
"MetaPost" generating DVI (Metadraw). The other points are already
addressed.

Perhaps xdvi is a good start point to understand how to convert dvi to raw images. dvi isn't a ready to display format you have to prepare the missing glyphs (fonts). Knuth has provided a converter to make dvi files human readable and you task is to interpret this output. If you take a viewer as a start point you could store the fineshed rendering in a file instead of saving that. Like ps dvi is also a virtual machine code but much simpler.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-30 13:44                             ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-01-30 13:56                               ` tlaronde
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: tlaronde @ 2022-01-30 13:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

Le Sun, Jan 30, 2022 at 08:44:05AM -0500, ibrahim via 9fans a écrit :
> On Sunday, 30 January 2022, at 8:55 AM, tlaronde wrote:
> > The lacking piece is the end: converting DVI to something else than PS
> and extending DVI to include drawing primitives so that there is a
> "MetaPost" generating DVI (Metadraw). The other points are already
> addressed.
> 
> Perhaps xdvi is a good start point to understand how to convert dvi to raw images. dvi isn't a ready to display format you have to prepare the missing glyphs (fonts). Knuth has provided a converter to make dvi files human readable and you task is to interpret this output. If you take a viewer as a start point you could store the fineshed rendering in a file instead of saving that. Like ps dvi is also a virtual machine code but much simpler.

There is nothing difficult in the task per se. But when adding a
new block of DVI commands, it has to be done with some care. METAFONT
is also a rasterizer, so the fundamental bits are already there to
obtain a rasterized image. But there are, too, converters to develop
to translate the glyphes shapes of alien fonts in something
METAFONT can understand---TeX only uses the metrics informations,
it doesn't care about what is drawn in the boxes, this is why one
can use easily PS fonts with TeX; rendering, when what has to be
drawn is involved, is another story...

And xdvi is the perfect example of the problem: it has a myriad of
dependencies.
-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                     http://www.kergis.com/
                    http://kertex.kergis.com/
                       http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-30  2:18                                         ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-01-30 21:00                                           ` ron minnich
  2022-02-01 15:08                                             ` ibrahim via 9fans
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ron minnich @ 2022-01-30 21:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

On Sat, Jan 29, 2022 at 6:19 PM ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:

> As far as I recall OpenBSD (Theo dR) was interested in BSD licensed compilers at that time and that didn't happen.

That happened about 10 years earlier. The effort I am talking about
with jmk was 2013; the dustup with Theo was circa 2003:

See this discussion: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.plan9/c/0j5Xa_Bu_fs

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 14:26                     ` David Leimbach via 9fans
@ 2022-02-01 14:12                       ` Dan Cross
  2022-02-01 22:47                         ` hiro
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: Dan Cross @ 2022-02-01 14:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1634 bytes --]

On Tue, Feb 1, 2022 at 8:10 AM David Leimbach via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net>
wrote:

> > On Jan 29, 2022, at 8:03 AM, ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:
> >
> > And I believe that the reason why NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD are not as
> wide spread as Linux was the lack of a compiler suite conforming to the BSD
> license
>
> For some people it’s because they didn’t have a math coprocessor and Linux
> didn’t need one. For others it was the AT&T lawsuit.
>
> I haven’t ever heard the compiler tool chain was a big reason, but I’d be
> interested to hear your perspective here. GCC can produce code of any
> license.


This isn't really on-topic for 9fans, but I find this hard to believe.
Linux used the exact same compiler suite, and became wildly successful
while the BSD distributions mostly stagnated; certainly, the BSDs never
grew at the rate or reached the levels of popularity that Linux has
attained: it wasn't the license on the toolchain.

I believe that David is right that it was a combination of running on
really low-end hardware (in the early days, Torvalds accepted patches for
just about anything), and a similarly low barrier to entry (others
elsewhere have quipped about having to appease, "the Gods of BSD" to get
anything into those systems) and the AT&T lawsuit, which was at best
misguided but scared people off of BSD.

        - Dan C.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-30 21:00                                           ` ron minnich
@ 2022-02-01 15:08                                             ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-02-01 17:06                                               ` Dan Cross
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-02-01 15:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1963 bytes --]

On Sunday, 30 January 2022, at 10:00 PM, ron minnich wrote:
> That happened about 10 years earlier. The effort I am talking about
with jmk was 2013; the dustup with Theo was circa 2003:

Thanks for sharing those facts.

On Saturday, 29 January 2022, at 3:26 PM, David Leimbach wrote:
> I haven’t ever heard the compiler tool chain was a big reason, but I’d be interested to hear your perspective here. GCC can produce code of any license.

Until the BSD systems switched to llvm even the most basic installment was depending on gcc. The integrated system compiler was gpl'ed and on a unix system where the c compiler was the most important tool to achive portability this did never seem right.

On Tuesday, 1 February 2022, at 3:12 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> This isn't really on-topic for 9fans, but I find this hard to believe. Linux used the exact same compiler suite, and became wildly successful while the BSD distributions mostly stagnated; certainly, the BSDs never grew at the rate or reached the levels of popularity that Linux has attained: it wasn't the license on the toolchain.

Berkeley stopped their distribution of BSD systems right after they were forced to remove the toolchain. The last releases were 4.3 and 4.4 lite. Then the project got forked. It led to a stop in development. I personally believe that this was the main reason behind the BSD's to lose their charm. If you read about the reasoning why as an example Minix or even plan9 got their own toolchains I think you can read between the lines that the lack or the existence of a toolchain with the right license is far more important than many believe.

Of course this is only my personal opinion and probably I'm misinterpreting things.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-02-01 15:08                                             ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-02-01 17:06                                               ` Dan Cross
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: Dan Cross @ 2022-02-01 17:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

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On Tue, Feb 1, 2022 at 10:08 AM ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:

> On Tuesday, 1 February 2022, at 3:12 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>
> This isn't really on-topic for 9fans, but I find this hard to believe.
> Linux used the exact same compiler suite, and became wildly successful
> while the BSD distributions mostly stagnated; certainly, the BSDs never
> grew at the rate or reached the levels of popularity that Linux has
> attained: it wasn't the license on the toolchain.
>
> Berkeley stopped their distribution of BSD systems right after they were
> forced to remove the toolchain. The last releases were 4.3 and 4.4 lite.
>

Hmm, no, that's not quite right. 4.3BSD was in 1986; 4.4-Lite2 was in 1995:
nineish years later, with lots of intervening activity (Tahoe, Reno, Net/1,
Net/2, 4.4, 4.4-Lite, etc). Perhaps you meant to write 4.4 and 4.4-Lite?

Anyway, the toolchain switch had little to do with CSRG shutting down. The
reality there was that Unix stopped being interesting for an academic
department to continue supporting like EECS at UCB was with CSRG and BSD:
this was all spelled out in the 4.4BSD announcement. As Bostic put it, BSD
was always a community effort, but after 4.4, it just wasn't going to grow
within UCB:
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.unix.bsd/c/hZYO7xTDqQ8/m/NE-S-HWH9-wJ

They also understood that GCC was a better compiler than PCC was at the
time: with PCC on the VAX, they had post-processing steps implementing
peephole optimizations with shell scripts, and GCC just generated better
code. It also implemented most of the ANSI standard, which PCC did not. In
other words, there were technical reasons for switching to GCC beyond just
the license. Indeed, the setup document says, "Most 4.3BSD binaries may be
used with 4.4BSD in the course of the conversion. It is desirable to
recompile local sources after the conversion, as the new compiler (GCC)
provides superior code optimization." (
https://docs.freebsd.org/44doc/smm/01.setup/paper.pdf)

Then the project got forked. It led to a stop in development. I personally
> believe that this was the main reason behind the BSD's to lose their charm.
>

By "forked" do you mean the Jolitz's porting it to the 386? That was
independent of what happened with CSRG shutting down, and neither of those
had much to do with the GPL or adopting GCC as the system compiler.

This also ignores a lot of other developments: the VAX stopped being _the_
dominant platform of the Internet, there was a lot more choice for
reasonable Unix distributions from e.g. workstation vendors, many
organizations stopped looking at Unix as primarily a research system which
lead to the rise of standards bodies like IEEE with POSIX, which
subsequently lessened the need for something like BSD as a quasi-standard
for the likes of DARPA. Meanwhile, and the PC platform became huge, and
people who just wanted Unix on cheap machines suddenly had Linux as a free
working alternative that was "good enough". BSDi cost a lot of money for an
individual (around $1000 USD, if I recall correctly), was embroiled in a
lawsuit with AT&T (the outcome of which was not at all certain) and with
Linux you had a reasonable expectation that someone would help you boot it
on your toaster -- or at least accept the patches if you did it yourself --
and you didn't have to put with with some of the "big" personalities in the
traditional Unix world.

If you read about the reasoning why as an example Minix or even plan9 got
> their own toolchains I think you can read between the lines that the lack
> or the existence of a toolchain with the right license is far more
> important than many believe.
>

Plan 9 got its own toolchain because that was part of the project: how
would one evolve a language like C and a compiler/assembler/linker suite to
make it more pleasant for building the sort of holistic system that plan9
became, and how to accommodate cross-compilation and development in a
heterogenous hardware environment: indeed, many of the early plan9 design
choices were motivated by similar concerns. The license had little, if
anything, to do with it, and being an "open source" system was not a
primary goal of plan9 when the compilers were written. I can't really
imagine that GCC was given any serious consideration as a compiler for
plan9 simply on its merits, if indeed it was given any consideration at
all: at the time, it fulfilled a completely different purpose.

You may have a point with respect to the license mattering for the original
Minix, but bear in mind that the ACK predates GCC, and Tanenbaum was
building a pedagogical system, not a production system: he actually needed
to be able to distribute the toolchain with the Minix educational
materials. He probably could have used GCC just as well, but it's clear he
started Minix a few years ahead of the first public release, and GCC wasn't
available then. Since he already had ACK, it was logical to use it.

Of course this is only my personal opinion and probably I'm misinterpreting
> things.
>

I think, bluntly, this ignores a lot of the actual history and is an
example of confirmation bias in an analysis of the use of GPL in OSS OS
projects, or license toolchains more generally. Look at the complaints from
the OpenBSD people when the Clang/LLVM license changed; yet, they continue
to ship a pretty recent clang version despite the "unacceptability" of the
Apache 2.0 license, and let's be honest: they probably will for a long time
to come.

That said, I also think you're perfectly within your rights to ship your
kiosk application as a closed-source system if you want to, despite
protestations to the contrary.

        - Dan C.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-02-01 14:12                       ` Dan Cross
@ 2022-02-01 22:47                         ` hiro
  2022-02-02 13:22                           ` Wes Kussmaul
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: hiro @ 2022-02-01 22:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

> I believe that David is right that it was a combination of running on
> really low-end hardware (in the early days, Torvalds accepted patches for
> just about anything), and a similarly low barrier to entry (others
> elsewhere have quipped about having to appease, "the Gods of BSD" to get
> anything into those systems) and the AT&T lawsuit, which was at best
> misguided but scared people off of BSD.

I always explain it the following way to the non-techies:

You've heard of the appstore and how everybody wants to replicate
apple's "business model" behind it.

Well, it turns out they didn't come up with it.
The true inventor was Linus Torvalds.

Linux is an "appstore" for bad driver software. Maybe the first time
in human civilization where something so broken by design has become
the core underlying business plan  and gained so much interest to
succeed at such scale and against all rationality.

Apple had it all easy after this proof of concept. They sold half-ripe
hardware, with nearly none of the potential exploited by software, and
relied on mostly unvetted third-party submissions to fix that in
"apps". Worked for GNU/LINUX, makes apple rich, too.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-02-01 22:47                         ` hiro
@ 2022-02-02 13:22                           ` Wes Kussmaul
  2022-02-02 16:25                             ` ori
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: Wes Kussmaul @ 2022-02-02 13:22 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans


On 2/1/22 17:47, hiro wrote:
>> I believe that David is right that it was a combination of running on
>> really low-end hardware (in the early days, Torvalds accepted patches for
>> just about anything), and a similarly low barrier to entry (others
>> elsewhere have quipped about having to appease, "the Gods of BSD" to get
>> anything into those systems) and the AT&T lawsuit, which was at best
>> misguided but scared people off of BSD.
> I always explain it the following way to the non-techies:
>
> You've heard of the appstore and how everybody wants to replicate
> apple's "business model" behind it.
>
> Well, it turns out they didn't come up with it.
> The true inventor was Linus Torvalds.
>
> Linux is an "appstore" for bad driver software. Maybe the first time
> in human civilization where something so broken by design has become
> the core underlying business plan  and gained so much interest to
> succeed at such scale and against all rationality.
>
> Apple had it all easy after this proof of concept. They sold half-ripe
> hardware, with nearly none of the potential exploited by software, and
> relied on mostly unvetted third-party submissions to fix that in
> "apps". Worked for GNU/LINUX, makes apple rich, too.


Hiro, you have absolutely hit the nail on the head.

So, how do you add rationality and reliability to the 
dpkg-app/play-store idea?

Answer: emulate the ways this has been done for centuries in the 
physical world.


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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-02-02 13:22                           ` Wes Kussmaul
@ 2022-02-02 16:25                             ` ori
  2022-02-02 18:22                               ` ron minnich
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ori @ 2022-02-02 16:25 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

Quoth Wes Kussmaul <wes@ReliableID.com>:
> 
> Hiro, you have absolutely hit the nail on the head.
> 
> So, how do you add rationality and reliability to the 
> dpkg-app/play-store idea?
> 
> Answer: emulate the ways this has been done for centuries in the 
> physical world.

I'd like to think we've progressed past the point
of physical violence against vendors, but perhaps
you've got a point.


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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-02-02 16:25                             ` ori
@ 2022-02-02 18:22                               ` ron minnich
  2022-02-02 19:00                                 ` ibrahim via 9fans
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ron minnich @ 2022-02-02 18:22 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

This one statement: "Berkeley stopped their distribution of BSD
systems right after they were forced to remove the toolchain." is
completely wrong. I just asked the people who were there, on TUHS, and
they confirmed my memory: DARPA funding for BSD support ended in 1995,
and that was probably the biggest factor in ending the UCB activities
in BSD.

I think it's important to verify claims with primary sources. Many of
those people are still alive.

On Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 8:27 AM <ori@eigenstate.org> wrote:
>
> Quoth Wes Kussmaul <wes@ReliableID.com>:
> >
> > Hiro, you have absolutely hit the nail on the head.
> >
> > So, how do you add rationality and reliability to the
> > dpkg-app/play-store idea?
> >
> > Answer: emulate the ways this has been done for centuries in the
> > physical world.
> 
> I'd like to think we've progressed past the point
> of physical violence against vendors, but perhaps
> you've got a point.
> 

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-02-02 18:22                               ` ron minnich
@ 2022-02-02 19:00                                 ` ibrahim via 9fans
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-02-02 19:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

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On Wednesday, 2 February 2022, at 7:22 PM, ron minnich wrote:
> This one statement: "Berkeley stopped their distribution of BSD
systems right after they were forced to remove the toolchain." is
completely wrong. I just asked the people who were there, on TUHS, and
they confirmed my memory: DARPA funding for BSD support ended in 1995,
and that was probably the biggest factor in ending the UCB activities
in BSD.

I think it's important to verify claims with primary sources. Many of
those people are still alive.

Thank you for the clearance. Looking from a distance I misinterpreted the real reasons and I never met the primary sources in person. That was my interpretation and as it seems it was wrong. Thank you for your effort to make things more clear.

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-01-29 14:08                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
                                           ` (3 preceding siblings ...)
  2022-01-29 22:14                         ` Bakul Shah
@ 2022-02-04 15:30                         ` Kent R. Spillner
  2022-02-04 16:17                           ` Grant Defayette
                                             ` (2 more replies)
  4 siblings, 3 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: Kent R. Spillner @ 2022-02-04 15:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

> There is no benefit for the students to learn how to realize such a platform

In your experience do students appreciate being told what's best for them?  ;)



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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-02-04 15:30                         ` Kent R. Spillner
@ 2022-02-04 16:17                           ` Grant Defayette
  2022-02-04 16:29                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-02-04 17:48                           ` Kurt H Maier via 9fans
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: Grant Defayette @ 2022-02-04 16:17 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

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I could see some value in students learning a truly distributed system if
they are CS majors looking to specialize in scientific computing or
distributed processing work but otherwise it would generally be a huge
waste of their time. They would probably be far better off learning one of
the modern distributed computing platforms than something that is
quickly approaching 40 years old and only ever had a commercial lifespan of
4 short years. That said, I'm sure that there are plenty of more academic
type computer science students that would find such a project interesting
enough to throw a couple years at it.

On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 10:31 AM Kent R. Spillner <sl4mmy@zerosphere.org>
wrote:

> > There is no benefit for the students to learn how to realize such a
> platform
> 
> In your experience do students appreciate being told what's best for
> them?  ;)
> 

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-02-04 15:30                         ` Kent R. Spillner
  2022-02-04 16:17                           ` Grant Defayette
@ 2022-02-04 16:29                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
  2022-02-04 21:12                             ` sirjofri
  2022-02-04 17:48                           ` Kurt H Maier via 9fans
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: ibrahim via 9fans @ 2022-02-04 16:29 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

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On Friday, 4 February 2022, at 4:30 PM, Kent R. Spillner wrote:
> In your experience do students appreciate being told what's best for them?  ;)

My platform isn't one for teaching programing its for teaching other subjects like math, electronics, statics and so on. It's neither my goal nor the intention of such a project to teach the students how to realize such a project. 

The suggestion that I would include the code so that someone could learn from it is unrealistic. If one of those students get interested in the way I did the whole thing they find the links for the projects I used as a basement.

Neither operating system development nor programming in C for plan9 are subjects of my platform and so there is no benefit for my students having the sources. If someone gets interested he/she can use the links for the used open source projects and become fans of whatever they like. Perhaps some will get motivated by using such a system to invest the necessary time and effort. I don't hide what I used so they can become enthusiasts if they want to. But this platform doesn't need accompanied sources nor will the students have direct access to a shell or the tools everything is hidden behind a simple kiosk app which has no other goal beside being the "envelop" for the real information meant to be taught.
 
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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-02-04 15:30                         ` Kent R. Spillner
  2022-02-04 16:17                           ` Grant Defayette
  2022-02-04 16:29                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-02-04 17:48                           ` Kurt H Maier via 9fans
  2022-02-05  0:08                             ` Frank D. Engel, Jr.
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: Kurt H Maier via 9fans @ 2022-02-04 17:48 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

On Fri, Feb 04, 2022 at 09:30:26AM -0600, Kent R. Spillner wrote:
> 
> In your experience do students appreciate being told what's best for them?  ;)
> 

In my experience needing to be told what's best for them is the defining
characteristic of a student

khm


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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-02-04 16:29                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
@ 2022-02-04 21:12                             ` sirjofri
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: sirjofri @ 2022-02-04 21:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans


04.02.2022 17:29:55 ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net>:

> On Friday, 4 February 2022, at 4:30 PM, Kent R. Spillner wrote:
> In your experience do students appreciate being told what's best for 
> them? ;)
>
> My platform isn't one for teaching programing its for teaching other 
> subjects like math, electronics, statics and so on. It's neither my 
> goal nor the intention of such a project to teach the students how to 
> realize such a project.
>
> The suggestion that I would include the code so that someone could 
> learn from it is unrealistic. If one of those students get interested 
> in the way I did the whole thing they find the links for the projects I 
> used as a basement.

Well, I personally would like to see how you made a kiosk app like that 
using a Plan 9 system. It's not that I want to see what you used as a 
base, but I want to see how you combined all that.

So there is a benefit of releasing some parts of the source somewhere at 
least, if not inside the software, maybe somewhere else.

> Neither operating system development nor programming in C for plan9 are 
> subjects of my platform and so there is no benefit for my students 
> having the sources. If someone gets interested he/she can use the links 
> for the used open source projects and become fans of whatever they 
> like. Perhaps some will get motivated by using such a system to invest 
> the necessary time and effort. I don't hide what I used so they can 
> become enthusiasts if they want to. But this platform doesn't need 
> accompanied sources nor will the students have direct access to a shell 
> or the tools everything is hidden behind a simple kiosk app which has 
> no other goal beside being the "envelop" for the real information meant 
> to be taught.

sirjofri

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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-02-04 17:48                           ` Kurt H Maier via 9fans
@ 2022-02-05  0:08                             ` Frank D. Engel, Jr.
  2022-02-05 16:47                               ` hiro
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread
From: Frank D. Engel, Jr. @ 2022-02-05  0:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Kurt H Maier via 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2553 bytes --]

Students who rely on that will never really learn.

 From my perspective, most supposedly modern systems have been a bigger 
waste of time than some of the older ones.

Windoze, Linux, etc. in some ways still have not caught up to features 
that Multics and Plan 9, among other systems, had to offer decades ago - 
and they are bolting things on that came naturally to the older systems, 
so they don't work very well in contrast.  They build complexity on 
complexity instead of leveraging a simple consistent approach that can 
actually be understood.

Multics was in some ways a conceptual precursor to today's "cloud 
computing" (in the sense that it was engineered to be a multi-tenant 
system with separate projects being billed for the resources they used), 
while also introducing the world to concepts such as access control 
lists (ACLs).

Plan 9 offers a level of network transparency and process 
interoperability that most of our "modern" systems don't seem to be able 
to get right, not to mention having been well-designed for working 
transparently across systems with differing architectures (SPARC, MIPS, 
etc.) out of a common file system.

If a student just wants to write business logic for some big company 
doing batch processing or wants to create web sites or some such then 
sure, let them stick with what is out there at the moment.  If they 
really want to understand computers and computer programming, they 
should try to learn from the ground up.  Being limited to "modern" 
systems won't get them nearly as far as being exposed to a range of 
ideas and different approaches that have been taken over time.


  “Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”

―Edmund Burke


On 2/4/22 12:48 PM, Kurt H Maier via 9fans wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 04, 2022 at 09:30:26AM -0600, Kent R. Spillner wrote:
>> In your experience do students appreciate being told what's best for them?  ;)
>>
> In my experience needing to be told what's best for them is the defining
> characteristic of a student
>
> khm
>
>
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* Re: [9fans] licence question
  2022-02-05  0:08                             ` Frank D. Engel, Jr.
@ 2022-02-05 16:47                               ` hiro
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread
From: hiro @ 2022-02-05 16:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

> Students who rely on that will never really learn.

sad but true.
being a student has nothing to do with the willingness to learn, or to
put an effort to probe and discover.

even more reason why the extra rare curiosity should be rewarded, e.g.
by making information available for the one who puts the effort (to
try and stab the underlying machinery, in this case to read the
underlying code).

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Thread overview: 61+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2022-01-27 22:43 [9fans] licence question ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-27 22:48 ` hiro
2022-01-27 23:33   ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-28  0:05     ` hiro
2022-01-28  0:42       ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-28  0:46         ` ori
2022-01-28  1:14           ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-28  3:23             ` Kurt H Maier via 9fans
2022-01-28 12:01               ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-28 21:59                 ` hiro
2022-01-29 13:03                   ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-29 13:24                     ` hiro
2022-01-29 14:08                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-29 14:59                         ` sirjofri
2022-01-29 18:11                         ` Grant Defayette
2022-01-29 19:00                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-29 20:43                         ` hiro
2022-01-29 21:32                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-29 21:42                             ` hiro
2022-01-29 22:23                               ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-29 23:14                                 ` sirjofri
2022-01-29 23:27                                   ` hiro
2022-01-29 23:36                                   ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-30  0:08                                     ` hiro
2022-01-30  1:45                                       ` ron minnich
2022-01-30  2:18                                         ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-30 21:00                                           ` ron minnich
2022-02-01 15:08                                             ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-02-01 17:06                                               ` Dan Cross
2022-01-29 22:14                         ` Bakul Shah
2022-01-29 22:40                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-02-04 15:30                         ` Kent R. Spillner
2022-02-04 16:17                           ` Grant Defayette
2022-02-04 16:29                           ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-02-04 21:12                             ` sirjofri
2022-02-04 17:48                           ` Kurt H Maier via 9fans
2022-02-05  0:08                             ` Frank D. Engel, Jr.
2022-02-05 16:47                               ` hiro
2022-01-29 14:26                     ` David Leimbach via 9fans
2022-02-01 14:12                       ` Dan Cross
2022-02-01 22:47                         ` hiro
2022-02-02 13:22                           ` Wes Kussmaul
2022-02-02 16:25                             ` ori
2022-02-02 18:22                               ` ron minnich
2022-02-02 19:00                                 ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-29 16:15                     ` Wes Kussmaul
2022-01-29 16:56                     ` Bakul Shah
2022-01-29 17:17                       ` ori
2022-01-29 18:14                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-29 18:58                     ` cinap_lenrek
2022-01-29 19:23                       ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-29 20:48                         ` hiro
2022-01-29 21:18                           ` Steve Simon
2022-01-29 21:34                             ` hiro
2022-01-29 21:43                             ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-29 22:44                               ` hiro
2022-01-29 23:26                                 ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-30  7:55                           ` tlaronde
2022-01-30 13:44                             ` ibrahim via 9fans
2022-01-30 13:56                               ` tlaronde
2022-01-28  3:14 ` Lucio De Re

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